CHAPTER XVIII.
One afternoon the postman brought to Fink a letter with a black seal. Having opened it, he went silently to his own room. As he did not return, Anton anxiously followed, and found Fink sitting on the sofa, his head resting on his hand.
"You have had bad news?" inquired Anton.
"My uncle is dead," was the reply; "he, the richest man, perhaps, in Wall Street, New York, has been blown up in a Mississippi steamer. He was an unapproachable sort of man, but in his way very kind to me, and I repaid him by folly and ingratitude. This thought imbitters his death to me. And, besides that, the fact decides my future career."
"You will leave us!" cried Anton, in dismay.
"I must set off to-morrow. My father is heir to all my uncle's property, with the exception of some land in the Far West, to which I am left executor. My uncle was a great speculator, and there is much troublesome business to be settled. Therefore my father wishes me to go to New York as soon as possible, and I plainly see that I am wanted there. He has all at once conceived a high idea of my judgment and capacity for business. Read his letter." Anton scrupled to take it. "Read it, my boy," said Fink, with a sad smile; "in my family circle, father and son write each other no secrets." Anton read. "The excellent accounts which Mr. Schröter sends me of your practical sense and shrewdness in business lead me to request you to go over yourself, in which case I shall send Mr. Westlock, of our house, to assist you."
Anton laid the letter down, and Fink asked, "What say you to this praise of the principal's? You know that I had some reason to believe myself far from a favorite."
"Be that as it may, I consider the praise just, and his estimate correct," replied Anton.
"At all events," said Fink, "it decides my fate. I shall now be what I have long wished, a landed proprietor on the other side of the Atlantic. And so, dear Anton, we must part," he continued, holding out his hand to his friend; "I had not thought the time would so soon come. But we shall meet again."
"Possibly," said Anton, sadly, holding the young nobleman's hand fondly in his. "But now go to Mr. Schröter; he has the first claim to hear this."
"He knows it already; he has had a letter from my father."
"The more reason why he should expect you."
"You are right; let us go."
Anton returned to his desk, and Fink went to the principal's little office. The merchant came to meet him with a serious aspect; and, after having expressed his sympathy, invited him to sit down, and quietly to discuss his future prospects.
Fink replied with the utmost courtesy: "My father's views for me—based on your estimate—agree so well with my own wishes, that I must express my gratitude to you. Your opinion of me has been more favorable than I could have ventured to expect. If, however, you have really been satisfied with me, I should rejoice to hear it from your own lips."
"I have not been entirely satisfied, Herr von Fink," replied the merchant, with some reserve; "you were not in your proper place here. But that has not prevented my discerning that for other and more active pursuits you were eminently well fitted. You have, in a high degree, the faculty of governing and arranging, and you possess uncommon energy of will. A desk in a counting-house is not the place for such a nature."
Fink bowed. "Nevertheless, it was my duty," said he, "to fill that place properly, and I own that I have not done so."
"You came here unaccustomed to regular work, but during the last few months you have differed but little from a really industrious counting-house clerk. Hence my letter to your father."
Fink rose, and the merchant accompanied him to the door, saying, "Your departure will be a great loss to one of our friends."
Fink abruptly stopped, and said, "Let him go with me to America. He is well fitted to make his fortune there."
"Have you spoken to him on the subject?"
"I have not."
"Then I may state my opinion unreservedly. Wohlfart is young, and I believe the defined and regular work of a house like this very desirable discipline for him for some years to come. Meanwhile, I have no right to sway his decision. I shall be sorry to lose him, but if he thinks he will make his fortune more rapidly with you, I have no objection to make."
"If you will allow me, I will ask him at once," said Fink.
Then calling Anton into the office, he went on to say, "Anton, I have requested Mr. Schröter to allow you to accompany me. It will be a great point to me to have you with me. You know how much attached to you I am; we will share my new career, and get on gloriously, and you shall fix your own conditions. Mr. Schröter leaves you to decide."
Anton stood for a moment thoughtful and perplexed; the future so suddenly opened out to him looked fair and promising, but he soon collected himself, and, turning to the principal, inquired, "Is it your opinion that I should do right to go?"
"I can not say it is, dear Wohlfart," was the merchant's grave reply.
"Then I remain," said Anton, decidedly. "Do not be angry with me, Fritz, for not following you. I am an orphan, and have now no home but this house and this firm. If Mr. Schröter will keep me, I will remain with him."
Evidently touched by the words, the merchant replied: "Remember, however, that thus deciding you give up much. In my counting-house you can neither become a rich man, nor have any experience of life on a large and exciting scale; our business is limited, and the day may come when you will find this irksome. All that tends to your future independence, wealth, connections, and so forth, you will more readily secure in America than with me."
"My good father often used to say to me, 'Dwell in the land; and verily thou shalt be fed.' I will live according to his wish," said Anton, in a voice low with emotion.
"He is, and always will be, a mere cit," cried Fink, in a sort of despair.
"I believe that this love of country is a very sound foundation for a man's fortune to rise upon," said the merchant, and there was an end of the matter.
Fink said nothing more about the proposal, and Anton tried, by countless small attentions, to show his friend how dear he was to him, and how much he regretted his departure.
That evening Fink said to Anton, "Hearken, my lad; I have a fancy to take a wife across with me."
Anton looked at his friend in utter amazement, and, like one who has received a great shock and wishes to conceal it often does, he inquired, in forced merriment, "What! you will actually ask Fräulein von Baldereck—"
"That's not the quarter. What should I do with a woman whose only thought would be how she could best amuse herself with her husband's money?"
"But who else can you be thinking of? Not of the ancient cousin of the house?"
"No, my fine fellow, but of the young lady of the house."
"For Heaven's sake, no!" cried Anton, springing up; "that would, indeed, be a pretty business."
"Why so?" was the cool reply. "Either she takes me, and I am a lucky man, or she takes me not, and I start without a wife."
"But have you ever thought of it before?" inquired Anton, uneasily.
"Sometimes—indeed often during the last year. She is the best housewife, and the noblest, most unselfish creature in the world."
Anton looked at his friend in growing astonishment. Not once had Fink given him the remotest hint of such a thing.
"But you never told me of it."
"Have you ever told me of your feelings for another young lady?" replied Fink, laughing.
Anton blushed and was silent.
"I think," continued Fink, "that she does not dislike me; but whether she will go with me or not I can not tell; however, we shall soon know, for I am going at once to ask her."
Anton barred the way. "Once more I implore you to reflect upon what you are going to do."
"What is there to reflect upon, you simple child?" laughed Fink; but an unusual degree of excitement was visible in his manner.
"Do you then love Sabine?" asked Anton.
"Another of your home questions," replied Fink. "Yes, I do love her in my own way."
"And do you mean to take her into the back woods?"
"Yes; for she will be a high-hearted, strong-minded wife, and will give stability and worth to my life there. She is not fascinating—at least one can't get on with her as readily as with many others; but if I am to take a wife, I need one who can look after me. Believe me, the black-haired one is the very one to do that; and now let me go; I must find out how I stand."
"Speak at least to the principal in the first instance," cried Anton after him.
"First to herself," cried Fink, rushing down the stairs.
Anton paced up and down the room. All that Fink had said in praise of Sabine was true; that he warmly felt. He knew, too, how deep her feeling for him was, and yet he foresaw that his friend would meet with some secret obstacle or other. Then another thing displeased him. Fink had only spoken of himself; had he thought of her happiness in the matter—had he even felt what it would cost her to leave her beloved brother, her country, and her home? True, Fink was the very man to scatter the blossoms of the New World profusely at her feet, but he was always restless; actively employed, would he have any sympathy for the feelings of his German wife? And involuntarily our hero found himself taking part against his friend, and deciding that Sabine ought not to leave the home and brother to whom she was so essential; and, absorbed in these thoughts, Anton paced up and down, anxious and heavy-hearted. It grew dark, and still Fink did not return.
Meanwhile he was announced to Sabine. She came hurriedly to meet him, and her cheeks were redder than usual as she said, "My brother has told me that you must leave us."
Fink began in some agitation, "I must not, I can not leave without having spoken openly to you. I came here without any interest in the quiet life to which I had been so unaccustomed. I have here learned the worth and the happiness of a German home. You I have ever honored as the good spirit of the house. Soon after my arrival, you began to treat me with a distance of manner which I have always lamented. I now come to tell you how much my eyes and heart have clung to you. I feel that my life would be a happy one if I could henceforth ever hear your voice, and if your spirit could accompany mine along the paths of my future life."
Sabine became very pale, and retreated. "Say no more, Herr von Fink," said she, imploringly, raising her hand unconsciously, as if to avert what she foresaw.
"Nay, let me speak," rapidly continued he. "I should consider it the greatest happiness if I could take with me the conviction of not being indifferent to you. I have not the audacity to ask you to follow me at once into an uncertain life, but give me a hope that in a year I may return and ask you to become my wife."
"Do not return," said Sabine, motionless as a statue, and in a voice scarcely audible; "I implore you to say no more."
Her hands convulsively grasped the back of the chair next to her, and, supporting herself by it, she stood with bloodless cheeks, looking at her suitor through her tears with eyes so full of grief and tenderness that the wild-hearted man before her was thoroughly overcome, and lost all self-confidence—nay, forgot his own cause in his distress at her emotion, and his anxiety to soothe it.
"I grieve that I should thus have shocked you," said he; "forgive me, Sabine."
"Go! go!" implored Sabine, still standing as before.
"Let me not part from you without some comfort; give me an answer; the most painful were better than this silence."
"Then hear me," said Sabine, with unnatural calmness, while her breast heaved and her hands trembled; "I loved you from the first day of your arrival; like a childish girl, I listened with rapture to the tone of your voice, and was fascinated by all your lips uttered; but I have conquered the feeling. I have conquered it," she repeated. "I dare not be yours, for I should be miserable."
"But why—why?" inquired Fink, in genuine despair.
"Do not ask me," said Sabine, scarce audibly.
"I must hear my sentence from your own lips," cried Fink.
"You have played with your own life and with the life of others; you would always be unsparing in carrying out your plans; you would undertake what was great and noble—that I believe—but you would not shrink from the sacrifice of individuals. I can not bear such a spirit. You would be kind to me—that, too, I believe; you would make as many allowances for me as you could, but you would always have to make them: that would become burdensome to you, and I should be alone—alone in a foreign land. I am weak, spoiled, bound by a hundred ties to the customs of this house, to the little domestic duties of every day, and to my brother's life."
Fink looked down darkly. "You are punishing severely in this hour all that you have disapproved in me hitherto."
"No," cried Sabine, holding out her hand, "not so, my friend. If there have been hours in which you have pained me, there have been others in which I have looked up to you in admiration; and this is the very reason that keeps us apart forever. I can never be at rest near you; I am constantly tossed from one extreme of feeling to another; I am not sure of you, nor ever should be. I should have to conceal this inward conflict in a relation where my whole nature ought to be open to you, and you would find that out, and would be angry with me."
She gave him her hand. Fink bent low over the little hand, and pressed a kiss upon it.
"Blessings on your future!" said Sabine, trembling all over. "If ever you have spent a happy hour among us, oh! think of it when far away. If ever in the German merchant's house, in the career of my brother, you have found any thing to respect, think, oh! think of it in that far country. In the different life that awaits you, in the great enterprises, the wild struggles that you will engage in, never think slightly of us and of our quiet ways;" and she held her left hand over his head, like an anxious mother blessing her parting darling.
Fink pressed her right hand firmly in his own; both looked long into each other's eyes, and both faces were pale. At last Fink said, in his deep, melodious voice, "Fare you well!"
"Fare you well!" replied she, so low that he hardly caught the words. He walked slowly away, while she looked after him motionless, as one who watches the vanishing of an apparition.
When the merchant, after the close of his day's work, went into his sister's room, Sabine flew to meet him, and, clasping him in her arms, laid her head on his breast.
"What is it, my child?" inquired he, anxiously stroking back her hair from her damp brow.
"Fink has been with me; I have been speaking with him."
"About what? Has he been disagreeable? Has he made you an offer?" asked the merchant, in jest.
"He has made me an offer," said Sabine.
Her brother started: "And you, my sister?"
"I have done what you might expect me to do—I shall not see him again."
Tears started at the words; she took her brother's hand and kissed it.
"Do not be angry with me for weeping. I am still a little shaken: it will soon pass."
"My precious sister—dear, dear Sabine!" cried the merchant; "I can not but fear that you thought of me when you refused."
"I thought of you and of your self-sacrificing, duty-loving life, and his bright form lost the fair colors in which I had once seen it clothed."
"Sabine, you have made a sacrifice for my sake," cried her brother.
"No, Traugott; if this has been a sacrifice, I have made it to the home where I have grown up under your care, and to the memory of our good parents, whose blessing rests on our quiet life."
It was late when Fink re-entered Anton's room; he looked heated, threw his hat on the table, himself on the sofa, and said to his friend,
"Before any thing else, give me a cigar."
Anton shook his head as he reached him a bundle, and asked, "How have you fared?"
"No wedding to be," coolly returned Fink. "She plainly showed me that I was a good for nothing sort of fellow, and no match for a sensible girl. She took the matter rather too seriously, assured me of her regard, gave me a sketch of my character, and dismissed me. But, hang me!" cried he, springing up, and throwing away his cigar, "if she be not the best soul that ever preached virtue in a petticoat. She has only one fault, that of not choosing to marry me; and even there she is right."
Fink's strange bearing made Anton feel anxious.
"Why have you been so long away, and where have you been?" said he.
"Not to the wine-shop, as your wisdom seems to surmise. If a man be refused, he has surely a good right to be melancholy for a couple of hours or so. I have done what any one would in such desperate circumstances. I have walked about and philosophized. I have quarreled with the world—that is to say, with the black-haired and myself—and then ended by standing still before a lamp-lit stall, and buying three oranges." So saying, he drew them out of his pocket. "And now, my son, the past is over and gone; let us speak of the future: this is the last evening that we shall spend together; let no cloud hang over our spirits. Make me a glass of punch, and squeeze these fat fellows in. Orange-punch-making is one of the accomplishments you owe to me. I taught it you, and now the rogue makes it better than I do. Come and sit down beside me."
The next morning old Sturm himself came to carry off the luggage. Fink took Anton's hand, and said, "Before I go through my leave-taking of all the others, I repeat to you what I said in our early days. Go on with your English, that you may come after me. And be I where I may, in log hut or cabin, I shall always have a room ready for you. As soon as you are tired of this Old World, come to me. Meanwhile, I make you my heir; you will take possession of my rooms. For the rest, be perfectly sure that I have done with all bad ways. And now—no emotion, my boy!—there are no great distances nowadays on our little earth." He tore himself away, hurried into the counting-house, returned, bowed to the ladies at the window, clasped his friend once more to his heart, leaped into the carriage, and away—away to the New World.
Meanwhile Anton mournfully returned to the office, and wrote a letter to Herr Stephan in Wolfsburg, inclosing that worthy man a new price current and several samples of sugar.